Cult director Hartley tries thriller in "Fay Grim"

(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-05-17 10:26

Cast members Jeff Goldblum, Jasmin Tabatabai, Elina Loewensohn and director Hal Hartley (L-R) pose during a photocall to present their film 'Fay Grim' running out of competition at the 57th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin February 13, 2007. [AP]

Hal Hartley made his name as an independent director in the early 1990s with quirky cult movies but he's hoping his latest film, which boasts two stars and a big explosion, will get a wider viewing.

Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum are the stars of "Fay Grim," a sequel to Hartley's 1997 film "Henry Fool." The new film is about a single mother coerced by a CIA agent into tracking down notebooks belonging to her fugitive husband.

What starts as a typical Hartley small-scale suburban American comic drama becomes an international spy story with a satirical edge taking the heroine, Fay, to Paris and Istanbul.

"The story itself and the manner in which it's told definitely is not more mainstream than anything else I've done; in certain ways it's more challenging," Hartley told Reuters in an interview before the film's May 18 release.

"On the other hand it does have two stars and a car explodes. It will probably be the film of mine that's seen by the most people right off the bat in the United States."

Part of the reason for that -- apart from a lead actress familiar from "Superman Returns" and "You've Got Mail" -- is that it was funded by HDNet TV, a premium cable network that will air it simultaneously with the May 18 theatre release.

After the critical success of early films such as "The Unbelievable Truth," "Trust" and "Simple Men," Hartley's stature as an independent film maker was on a par with the likes of Jim Jarmusch.

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His 1994 "Amateur," starring Isabelle Huppert, was among his most commercial films, while "Henry Fool," the story of a garbage man inspired by a mysterious newcomer to write poetry that wins the Nobel prize, was a hit with critics even though its box office success was limited.

"If we lived in a world where a Hal Hartley film was a mainstream movie, we'd be living in a different world," Hartley told reporters at a press day for "Fay Grim" this month.

"I'm a realistic person. The kind of things I'm interested in and the manner of making them into films doesn't stand a big chance of being popular."

In his new film, 10 years have passed since the mysterious Henry Fool, Fay's former husband, disappeared to escape arrest. Now the CIA is on his trail, concerned that his missing journals contain coded information about U.S. meddling in Latin America, Afghanistan and other international hotspots.

Early reviews have been mixed. Hollywood Reporter critic Michael Rechtshaffen said that while Hartley fans would still be up for the ride, the film was "wildly ambitious."

"Hartley is a man with a lot to say about what's going on in the world these days, and while the trademark irreverence is very much intact, his venture into a much broader, international landscape proves more admirable than rewarding."

The script takes jibes at post-September 11 U.S. foreign policy and has the heroine encountering an Afghan Islamist militant leader in hiding in Turkey who, it turns out, is an old friend of her husband Henry Fool.

"I want to upset your habits, upset your assumptions, your preconceptions," Hartley said in the interview. "I portray Jalal, the terrorist, as the enemy ... but that doesn't mean he doesn't have his reasons. Villains have to be believable."

Although the film is a sequel, Hartley said he deliberately wrote it to stand alone. "I'm hoping that by a third of the way into the film you're going to be making a note to yourself 'I have to see the first one."'